Ex-cop accused of hiding evidence testifies 40 years after murder trial

A retired police officer accused of concealing crucial evidence in the 1986 murder trial of Alan Hall used a cane today as he shuffled to the witness box 40 years after his original testimony – this time giving evidence as a defendant.

The elderly man, whose identity is suppressed, has been on trial for three weeks in the High Court at Auckland, charged with obstruction of justice alongside another former officer who also can’t be named.

The suppression includes their specific roles in the investigation and prosecution, which resulted in Hall spending 17 years in prison. The Supreme Court exonerated Hall in 2022, describing his wrongful conviction as the result of either “extreme incompetence or a deliberate and wrongful strategy”.

While that decision is “an interesting back story”, it should not be taken as gospel, defence lawyer David Jones, KC, said today in an opening statement to Justice Ian Gualt, who will decide the case instead of a jury.

“Those two options are not appropriate ones for Your Honour to be constrained by,” Jones continued, noting that the two defendants were not parties to the final appeal and “didn’t have an opportunity to have a say”.

“The Supreme Court judgment is framed by different evidence.”

Jones’ client started his testimony by listing his age-related ailments and conceding that his memory is not what it used to be.

“My thought processes are such that at times I struggle,” he said.

Prosecutors allege the defendants are to blame for a redaction in a written witness statement read to the judge and jurors in 1986. Motorist Ronald Turner had told police he saw a man in a hoodie running across the street and acting suspiciously on the same October 1985 evening and in the same Papakura neighbourhood where Arthur Easton was stabbed to death in his home by a masked intruder.

The witness described the man as Māori, insisting the stranger was “definitely dark-skinned” when police returned to his home for a follow-up interview months later. But in the finalised written statement presented at a pre-trial hearing and later at trial, his description of the man’s ethnicity was missing.

Hall is a light-skinned Pākehā.

“The undisclosed information was crucial,” Christchurch-based lawyer James Rapley, KC, told the judge last week while testifying as an expert witness. “I have no doubt it would have made a significant difference to the defence case.”

Lawyer Bruce Stainton, who worked for years on Hall’s appeals, shared a similar sentiment. The defendants continued to conceal the information even when he made detailed written requests for additional evidence as part of the appeal process, it is alleged.

“It would have been essential,” he said of the undisclosed information.

But the defence has argued that Turner’s statements were of little actual value.

Lawyers asked Justice Gault yesterday to dismiss the charges early, based in part on testimony last week from Turner and his ex-wife. Both said they couldn’t remember seeing the stranger’s face in the dark, but they believed him to be Māori based on his “mannerisms and his movements”.

Justice Gault declined the application after prosecutor John Billington, KC, argued that the case should be judged by what was known to the defendants in 1986 – not new testimony based on memories that are likely to have significantly faded over the past 40 years.

Just like Turner and his ex-wife last week, the defendant answered many questions while in the witness box today by telling the judge he simply couldn’t remember.

But he did recall having strong doubts about the Turners’ witness statements in the lead-up to the trial. Police had returned to the scene and recreated what they thought Turner’s vantage point would have been that night, the court was told. In the “sighting experiment”, in which other officers took turns playing the part of the suspicious pedestrian, the officer viewing the scene from Turner’s vantage point was unable to identify ethnicity, he said.

“It left me particularly in a point of view that the explanation given by Mr Turner may not have been accurate,” the defendant recalled of the experiment.

To him, the “crucial” evidence in the case was a bayonet and a balaclava left at the scene that were later traced back to Hall.

The defendant described a meeting with the Crown in which he voiced concerns raised by the “sighting experiment”. He left the meeting with the impression that Turner’s statements were “opinion” and would have been inadmissible at trial, but he still expected Turner to give evidence at trial and did not know why a written statement was used instead, he said.

The defendant said he considered it the Crown’s responsibility – not that of police – to disclose information to Hall’s lawyers once the case was in the court system.

“Did you consider you had any special obligations aside from the Crown?” his lawyer asked.

“No,” he responded.

“Did you have an intent to interfere with the proper course of justice?” Jones asked.

The defendant responded: “No, I did not.”

In his opening statement, Jones insisted his client “acted in a professional and ethical way” throughout the case.

The defendant is expected to continue giving evidence tomorrow.

Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.